Army doctor Ruso is serving in Roman-occupied Britain under very trying circumstances. He faces near poverty, a micro-managing Chief Administrative Officer, the loss of his household servants, mysterious deaths of prostitutes from the local bar, a killer, and the unexpected purchase of a beautiful British slave girl, with whom he is trying not to fall in love.

How not to buy a slave with a broken arm
"If you don't get help for her soon, this slave is going to die. I'll take her off your hands."
"She's a good strong girl, sir. She'll perk up in a day or two. I'll knock a bit off the price for that arm."
"What price? You told me she was lazy and useless."
"Useless at cleaning, sir, but an excellent cook. And what's more . . ."—
Innocens raised his free arm to steady the girl as he leaned forward in a haze of fish sauce and bellowed over more hammering "just the thing for a healthy young man like yourself, sir! Ripe as a peach and never been touched!"
"I'm not interested in touching her!" shouted Ruso, just as the noise stopped.
Innocens was smiling again. Ruso suppressed an urge to grab him by the neck and shake him.
"What would you like to offer, sir?"
Ruso hesitated. "I'll give you fifty denarii," he muttered.
Innocens's jowls collapsed in disappointment. He shrugged the shoulder not being used to prop up his merchandise. "I wish I could, sir. I can hardly afford to feed her. But the debt I took her for was four thousand."
It was a ridiculous lie. Even if it wasn't, Ruso didn't have four thousand denarii. He didn't even have four hundred. It had been an expensive summer.
"Fifty's more than she's worth, and you know it," he insisted. "Look at her."
"Fifty-five!" offered a voice from the scaffolding.
"What?" put in his companion. "You heard the man, she's a virgin. Fifty-six!"
Innocens scowled at them. "One thousand and she's yours, sir."
"Fifty or nothing."
The trader shook his head, unable to believe that any fool would offer all his money at the first bid. Ruso, remembering with a jolt that payday was still three weeks away, was barely able to believe it himself.
"Two hundred, sir. I can't go below two hundred. You'll ruin me."
"Go on!" urged the chorus from the scaffolding. "Two hundred for this lovely lady!"
Ruso looked up at the workmen. "Buy her yourselves if you like. I only came out for a bottle of bath oil."
At that moment the girl's body jerked. A feeble cough emerged from her lips. Her eyelids drifted shut. A slow silver drool emerged from her mouth and came to rest in shining bubbles on the sodden wool of her tunic. Claudius Innocens cleared his throat.
"Will that fifty be cash, then, sir?"

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Greek philosophy
Ruso lay on the borrowed bed and stared into the gloom that hid the cracks in the ceiling plaster, reflecting that Socrates was a wise man. Surveying the goods on a market stall, the great one was said to have remarked, "What a lot of things a man doesn't need!"
What a lot of things a man doesn't need. That thought had comforted Ruso over the last few months. The more you own, he had told himself, the more you have to worry about. Possessions are a burden.
The kind of possessions which needed to be regularly fed were a double burden. They were only worth having if they earned their keep by doing the laundry, or barking at burglars, or catching mice, or carrying you somewhere, or chirping in a way that your ex-wife used to find entertaining. It was a pity Socrates hadn't thought to add, Which is why I never shop after drinking on an empty stomach.

Learning to appreciate British beer
Ruso took the dripping cup of beer and wondered whether to clear up the dishes, or whether to wait and see how long it would be before Valens did.
Valens squinted into his own beer, rescued something with a forefinger, and flicked it over his shoulder. A rush of inquisitive puppies followed its course.
"How long have you been a beer drinker?"
"I'm not. Some native gave it to me as a thank-you for treating one of his children."
Ruso frowned into his drink. "Are you sure he was grateful?"
"Smells like goat's piss, I know. But you'll get used to it."
Ruso tried another mouthful and wondered how long getting used to it would take.

"Visit Sunny Britannia"
Valens's letters had made Britannia sound entertaining. The islands, apparently, were bursting with six-foot warrior women and droopy-mustached, poetry-spouting fanatics who roamed the misty mountains stirring up quarrelsome tribesmen in the guise of religion.
His own observation of Britannia now led Ruso to suspect that Valens had deliberately lured him here to relieve the boredom.

An open air market
"Fresh fish, sir?" A woman who was out of breath from pushing a cart up the slope lifted a cloth to display glistening silver bodies. She grinned, showing a gap where her front teeth should have been. "Just caught in time for dinner!"
Ruso shook his head.
In the space of a hundred paces he also declined a bucket of mussels, a jar of pepper, a delivery of coal, a set of tableware, an amphora of wine, a bolt of cloth to make the finest bedspread in Deva, some indefinable things in the shape of small sausages, and an introduction to an exotic dancer. Stepping onto the quay, he dodged a trolley being pushed by a small boy who couldn't see over it. Behind him a voice shouted, "Tray of plums, sir?"
It was comforting to know that he still had the appearance of a man with money to spend.

Hospital administration and how to save money
"Where's the clean linen kept?"
"Third door on the left, sir." The orderly disappeared into a side corridor.
Ruso flipped the latch and collided with the door, which had failed to open as expected. He rattled it to no avail, then realized there was a keyhole. When the orderly reappeared with an empty tray he said.
"Where's the key?"
"Officer Priscus will have it, sir."
"He took the key to the linen closet?"
"Officer Priscus is in charge of all the keys, sir."
"That's ridiculous!"
Ruso contemplated the silent, locked door of the linen closet. He had yet to meet Officer Priscus, but already he hated him. The man seemed to have turned hospital administration into an art form—something incomprehensible, overpriced, and useless. In the meantime, a sick girl was huddled in a corner of the changing room, facing a pile of wet towels.
Ruso stood back, contemplated the latch for a moment, and moved. A splintering crash echoed down the deserted corridor. He helped himself before anyone could arrive to see who had just bypassed the hospital administration with a military boot.

First rule with women: Get their name right
"By the way, I dropped in on your Tilla just now. Since you were too busy."
Ruso frowned. "My what?"
"Tilla," repeated Valens. When there was no reply he shook his head sadly. "Gods above, Ruso, you are hopeless. What have I told you? First rule with women: Get the name right. Anyway, it looks as though you've got away with that arm. Too early to say whether it'll be of any use, of course."
"Are you sure she's called Tilla?" persisted Ruso. "It doesn't look anything like that on the note of sale."
Valens shrugged. "She said that's what you called her."
"I didn't call her anything. I can't pronounce her name. It's got about fifteen syllables stuffed with g's and h's in odd places."
"She seems to think you told her she'd be Tilla from now on. She seemed quite cheerful about it."
"Did she?" There was no justice in the ways of the world. Ruso, who had saved the girl's life, was rewarded with weeping and "Let me die." Valens, who would have fixed her broken arm with a sharp saw, was granted a pleasant chat.

How Tilla got her name
"Utilis, said Ruso suddenly. "Useful. Her Latin's a bit shaky. She got into a bit of a state last night. Thought she was never going to get better and wanted to be off with the ancestors, or something. I told her she'd be utilis to me."
Tilla!

The joys of house hunting
Several would-be landlords had chalked up advertisements on the amphitheater walls.
The smell of urine and old cabbage stew, which hit Ruso as soon as the first door opened, failed to mask the personal odor of the toothless crone who announced,
"He an't here, I dunno where he is, and he an't done nothing."
"I'll keep looking," said Ruso.
"Did have," said the next one. "We did have a room. Somebody should have rubbed the notice off."
The third room was still having its walls plastered, but the owner's wife promised it would be ready by nightfall.
"How much?"
She told him. Ruso laughed and walked away, and she let him go.

The servants always know
"Somebody ought to ask the servants what happened to her," ventured the plump woman, dabbling her fingers in the bowl held by a patient slave and drying them on the towel over his arm. "Servants always know everything, you know. It's amazing."
As Ruso dipped his hands into the warm water, he glanced at the face of the slave holding the bowl. The man's expression gave nothing away.

A most persistent clerk
It was with neither joy nor enthusiasm that he opened the front door to urgent knocking shortly after dawn and found his clerk calling to ask whether there was anything he wanted done.
"What I want done," explained Ruso, summoning all the patience he could muster and wondering what sort of a clerk could fail to understand a staff rotation, "is for you to push off and not bother me until I tell you to. Is that clear?"
"Yes, sir."
"Dismissed."
"Yes, sir," replied the man, saluting, but instead of pushing off as ordered he remained on the doorstep.
"I said, dismissed."
"Yes, sir."
"So?"
"Are you ordering me not to come, sir?"
"Of course I'm ordering you not to come! Is there something the matter with your hearing?"
"No, sir."
Ruso leaned against the door frame and yawned. "Albanus," he said, "are you deliberately trying to annoy me?"
The man looked shocked. "Oh no, sir."
"Do you want to be charged with insubordination?"
"Oh no, sir!"
"Then what is the matter with you?"
Albanus's shoulders seemed to shrink as he glanced around to make sure there was no one listening in the street. "Officer Priscus's orders, sir."
"Officer Priscus," explained Ruso, "has seconded you to me. So you do what I tell you."
"Yes, sir."
"So what's the problem?"
"Sir, he's my superior. So when he tells me to report to you in the morning, I have to do it."
Ruso sighed. "He only meant the first morning."
Albanus shook his head. "No, sir. He told me again yesterday."
Ruso ran a hand through his hair. "I'll talk to him. Now get lost."
Albanus nodded eagerly. "Shall I get lost anywhere in particular, sir?"

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Take delight in a community full of interwoven relationships between army doctors, soldiers, slave girls, and hairy locals - all trying to live on the edge of the Roman empire.

Enjoy!

Oh my gawd! I thoroughly enjoyed this read!

“Medicus” is both historical fiction and a mystery, but it’s anomalous for both genres – purists, beware. Although the story takes place in the time of the Roman empire, except for occasional references to slaves, scrolls, and centurions it reads like a contemporary novel, something I appreciated but avid historical fiction fans may not. And while there’s technically a mystery here, the plotting is rather slow; we mostly watch our Harrison Ford-esque hero deal with all sorts of unfortunate (and often dryly comical) mishaps in his life rather than hot on the trail of more clues. The dead body shows up immediately, but the clues come slowly and sporadically and don’t drive the story.

That said, “Medicus” has a charm of its own. Although I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I couldn’t put it down, it was easy enough to pick up and read quickly and enjoyably. I couldn’t always follow every plot development, but I don’t know how much of that to blame on the book; preparations for Passover are wreaking havoc with my powers of concentration right now. Ultimately, I agree with the reviewer who called this “a beach read for historical fiction fans” and recommend it for anyone seeking a light and entertaining read that’s a little different.

I received this book as a gift from my daughter who loved the book. So with that in mind, I began to read it. Maybe a quarter of the way through it, I knew that I would have to struggle to finish it, but I wasn't sure why. After having read the entire book, I knew. This is an author who tells a good tale, but has not yet developed the art of giving her characters depth. They are cardboard people who do what they do as they meet their challenges in what otherwise is an interesting situation. My daughter read the second in the series before reading the first, and maybe, by then, the author had grown in her ability to create characters with whom one could relate, but starting with the first in the series, I probably won't go on to read the second.

Medicus is a story I've been meaning to read for a long time. I'm just glad I finally got around to this well written depiction of a Roman doctor of the Twentieth Legion who seems to have a gift for walking straight into trouble on the streets of Deva - modern day Chester. Gaius Petreius Ruso should know better than to get involved in anything going on in the streets of this outpost of the Roman army. Now he's saddled with a slave with a broken arm and she will most likely die before he can even attend to her injury. Since Tilla didn't die, Ruso needs to get her well enough to serve as his housekeeper until he can sell her. He certainly doesn't need a slave to worry about when his credit is so thinly stretch and his brother needs his financial contributions to keep the farm going back home. The best place Ruso can find for Tilla to recuperate is a bar/brothel. The problem with this place is that slave girls seem to keep disappearing from there. Did they run away or is the truth darker than that?

I love mystery novels of all types but Roman Britain especially appeals to me. Ruth Downie has given the character of Ruso just enough of everything I like: intelligence, morality, inquisitiveness, kindness and humor. I liked Tilla too, but I'm going to need to read more books in the series in order to have her personality unfold more for me. Ruso's roommate, Valens, another doctor, is a wonderful character who helps get Ruso in and out of trouble while keeping any of the damage from sticking to his reputation. Together the three of them promise to provide me with many hours of entertaining reading. I'm off to put the second book on my e-reader.

This was different from the usual crap that I read. The lesson seems to be that if you are a doctor living in the ancient Roman Empire and some hot little slave girl shows up, you should probably keep her. She can make you breakfast and all sorts of neat stuff.

I enjoyed this one.

Mixing the genres of crime/mystery and historical fiction can be a fantastic combination -- Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose is an exemplar of this mix -- but the mixing of genres can't always achieve the level of Mr. Eco, nor do I ever really expect it to, but there are a couple of things that do need to happen for me to really fall in love with the product of such a mix.

First, I need to believe that the characters are grounded firmly in their milieu rather than being transplants from our time; I need the biases of the author, therefore, to be barely discernible if not entirely invisible.

Second, I need the investigatory part of the mix to be gripping. I don't care if it's a who dunnit?, a why dunnit?, a police procedural, a howcatchem, or anything else, as long as I care about the mystery itself.

Unfortunately, Ruth Downie's Medicus didn't meet either criteria for me, yet I still liked it well enough not to feel like the book was a complete waste of time. I did like the Medicus himself, for instance. Gaius Petreius Ruso was a man I'd be happy to share a glass of vino with, but then there is the problem because he didn't feel like a medicus of the Roman Legions so much as a doctor at some modern hospital, with many of the same attitudes and ethical stances as a man of our time. Ruso made it impossible to disappear into the historical trappings of Medicus.

And then the crimes, the murders of slave girls attached to the military post, were not really investigated, they were more discussed until their perpetrator got himself caught. Perhaps now that Ruso has "solved" one crime he'll be a more active investigator in future books, actually making the pursuit of future criminals compelling, but even that won't be able to overcome his anachronistic beliefs.

I can't see myself continuing this series, which is too bad. I had fairly high hopes. Still, it's not terrible, and if the things that bothered me aren't deal breakers for you, you may just love Medicus.

Ruso is a divorced doctor in the Roman army, recently relocated to occupied Britain. He hates Britain, and misses Africa, his previous posting. He is committed to his job, which he conducts with compassion, dedication and skill; his compassion leads to his getting involved in solving the murders of several prostitutes, a role he highly resents, and from which he constantly tries to distance himself. It also leads to him buying an injured slave, which leads to a sub plot...

Ruso is a curmudgeon with a wry, sarcastic humour, and a workaholic. He sounds adorable, does he not?

I did enjoy entering a day in the life of a Roman Doctor in a less than civilized town of Brittania on the outskirts of the Roman Empire. It's difficult to read the disrespect towards women and their very few choices to support themselves.

Ruso seems to be one of few men with some integrity and compassion. But, no good deed goes unpunished.

Part of the authors parting comments was that slavery is now illegal. That may be so for most of the world, however he failed to mention that it is alive a well in some parts of the world with approximately 40 million people enslaved at any given time in the modern world. India and China being the worst perpetrators with the highest numbers of slaves.

World wide, over 70% are women and girls.

I came across this series here on Goodreads. I'm really surprised I hadn't heard of it before that because it's just as good as the series by Steven Saylor and Lindsey Davis.

Gaius Petreius Ruso is a doctor who has joined the Roman army after a nasty divorce and the death of his father, who left the family in debt. Ruso is the main support of his stepmother, two half-sisters, a younger brother, his brother's wife, and their two children. Ruso transfers to the 20th Legion in the British port of Deva (present-day Chester). Ruso has to deal with the Roman bureaucracy, filthy and noisy living quarters, and an endless number of dogs (they seem to be more numerous than the mice!). Then there is the injured and possibly dying slave girl, Tilla, that he buys to rescue her from her abusive master. To further complicate matters, he is called upon to examine the body of a young woman who is believed to have drowned. However, Ruso discovers that her neck was broken and there is bruising on her throat. This was definitely not an accidental or natural death. Ruso becomes a reluctant detective, all the while trying to do his job, send money home, and tend to Tilla, who is not the most cooperative or grateful patient.

This reads more like a historical novel with a touch of mystery than a historical mystery novel. The characters and the background are well drawn and interesting. Downie does an excellent job of portraying Roman Britain. She really makes it come to life. My father retired from the Air Force, so the military bureaucracy in Medicus is very familiar to me. Some things never change. Ruso is world weary with a dry sense of humor. I found myself laughing several times. The book has its serious moments, though. Downie doesn't flinch from showing how brutal life could be back then, especially for young women without protectors.

This is definitely a series worth checking out. I've already started the second book, Terra Incognita: A Novel of the Roman Empire, and it's promising to be just as good as this one.

I'm a bit of a Roman detective nut (shocking, I know), and have read several such series. I usually jump from one series to the next, interspersing with Urban Fantasy or non-fiction reading. I read this whole series front-to-back without pause, which should give you an indication of how much I loved it.

My reviews tend to focus on setting readers' expectations rather than rehashing blurbs or plot summaries. I hope this is useful to you.
You can see my review for the whole series here.

What to Expect
Ruso is a physician, serving as a medic in Rome's Legio XX stationed in Britannia at the start of Hadrian's reign. Ruso is reluctantly (he's a doctor, dammit, not an investigator!) dragged to solve a murder no one else wants to take a close look at. Things naturally become much more complicated than anyone expects, and Ruso is both aided and frustrated by his native housekeeper Tilla.

What I liked
The absolute charm of the writing. All characters are fully fleshed, believable, with their own motivations. The writing is witty, the setting is rich, the plot thought-out, and the mysteries engaging.

These are the kind of books where you care for the characters. Downie has a knack to depict the world-views of the characters realistically, switching viewpoints from a Roman medical officer to a British peasant woman. It is clear that each character - from main to support cast - is a fully realised person, with their own agendas and biases.

The plot of the stories grips you till can't put the book down. Downie is masterfully weaving the investigations through sub-plots, distractions, daily lives, grand events - till you just have to know what happens next. Ruso may be a reluctant investigator, but he has that nagging voice in his head when things don't quite fit well, and it keeps him following and digging for the truth. Tilla has her own sense of fairness, and views on what makes the world tick.

Downie locates each book in a different town, mostly around Roman Britain - this one set in Deva (Chester), and future volumes in other places. Downie has clearly done her research, and each location comes alive with the latest modern archaeological understanding of life there seeping through her writing.

What to be aware of
These aren't the noir mysteries I normally read and recommend. While there are certainly some gruesome bits (did I mention combat medic?), these aren't your typical first-person hard-boiled detective. Rather, the stories are told in a lighter vein, in third person perspective from either Ruso or Tilla's POV (only a few scenes in the early novels, with more Tilla-time as the series progresses)

Ms Downie has experience with archaeology and Latin history, and it shows in her writing. She has elected to translate most Latin terms into modern English (e.g. calling a master 'my lord' rather then 'domine', or using 'doctor' for physician), which may sound a tad weird to those used to Latin terms from similar series.
Be aware that while it's not strictly necessary to read the books in order, it certainly helps. This is the perfect place to start reading.

Summary
I absolutely love this series. I have no idea why it took me so long to get back to it, but I am glad I did. I devoured most of the books over my holidays. which made for a very enjoyable immersive 'trip' to ancient Roman Britain.
The only 'problem' I have with giving this book its much-deserved five-stars, is that the series gets even better!

--
Assaph Mehr, author of Murder In Absentia: A story of Togas, Daggers, and Magic - for lovers of Ancient Rome, Murder Mysteries, and Urban Fantasy.

Gaius Petrius Ruso is doctor serving with a Roman legion in Britain. Not very long ago, he was married, a hero (he had saved the Emperor Trajan's life), and the elder son of a prosperous family in southern Gaul. Now he's divorced, his father has died leaving behind a mountain of debt, his brief notoriety is forgotten, and Trajan is dead. He's struggling to pay off his father's debts, with his brother at home in Gaul working to keep the real state of their finances quiet so that their efforts have time to work.

In the meantime, he's sharing a mouse-infested with another army doctor and the previous owner's former dog, who has produced a litter of puppies. They have no servant to clean and cook for them, and their lodgings show it. Ruso has spent an unpleasant night examining the body of a dead woman fished out of the harbor, and then a long day on medical rounds. He doesn't need to buy an injured slave girl to rescue her from her sadistic owner, especially when she's too injured to work, won't talk, and will cost more to feed than she's worth.

So of course he does.
While he's treating the girl and coaxing her to talk, he becomes not so much interested in as worried about the deaths of two bar girls, and the lack of any investigation into their deaths. He keeps hearing more than he wants to because, to get her out of the military hospital, he rents a room for the slave girl, who finally speaks enough to decide to go by the name Tilla, upstairs in the bar. Ruso starts asking questions, and things start to happen--a burning brand through the window of his house, a trowel dropped from a rooftop and missing him only because Tilla saw it and pushed him out of the way--and his financial situation gets more and more complicated. His life is further enlivened when the hospital administrator, who has been away, returns, and demands that Tilla be pledged as collateral for the large loan he's taken out from the thanksgiving fund, to help stave of bankruptcy at home.

Ruso is cranky, impatient, and kind and generous despite himself and despite his circumstances. He keeps asking questions even when it's hurting his chances for promotion and making his working life more difficult. Tilla is proud, independent, and has every intention of killing herself rather than working as a whore in a bar (her previous owner's plan for her). As they slowly learn to trust each other, Ruso learns more about the workings of this Roman British town than he wants to know, or is safe to know.

This is a fascinating look at Roman Britain, with engaging characters and a good mystery at the core of it. The solution manages to be both fair and unexpected. This is the first of a series, and I'll be reading more of them.

Recommended.

I borrowed this book from a friend.